Tag Archives: Stephen Boyd

When a Soviet scientist (Jean Del Val), who has sought asylum in the US and has crucial top secret information to give to the government, is shot in an attempted assassination, which leaves him comatose, it is up to a team of five American agents (Arthur Kennedy, William Redfield, Raquel Welch, Donald Pleasance, Stephen Boyd) to go inside his body through miniaturization and remove the blood clot on his brain with the help of a laser. The miniaturizing process is a new invention that only lasts sixty minutes before the person, or object that has been made smaller will begin to regrow. The participants must work fast, but there is an added problem as one of them is also secretly a spy who is intent on undermining the mission.

The film is hailed as a classic by many and this is mainly due to its special effects, which even in this day and age aren’t bad. The question of what gets represented here is what it would really look like if a person were put into an actual body is hard to tell, but the effects are exciting even though the characters were simply matted in front of a green screen to create the psychedelic looking background. Yet I was still impressed as it gives off a sort-of surreal vision that made me feel like I had been transported to some foreign world along with the cast.

The script though unlike the effects is about as amateurish as you can get and if the action hadn’t been so meticulously designed this might’ve been considered a movie more suited to a camp film festival. For one thing it moves too fast particularly at the beginning. There needed to be more of a backstory about how this miniaturization process had been invented, how long it had been put to use, whether it was safe to use and who was the first to try it and had that person had any after effects none of which gets explained and is simply glossed over.

The characters are also overly obedient and willing to take on any assignment with little if any objection no matter what the potential danger. The Stephen Boyd character gets driven to the science lab and then when told that he’ll be shrunk to the size of a fingertip he puts up very little argument even though anyone else would be frightened about the prospect. Having one of the other characters call home to loved ones, or refuse to go on it would’ve helped make them seem less one-dimensional and robotic.

The crew’s conversations are boring and done in too much of a rhythmic way. Anytime an unforeseen problem arises one of them almost immediately comes up with a solution to it. We learn nothing about these people as the journey progresses nor care all that much about them. In fact the only interesting verbal exchanges that do occur are between Edmund O’Brien’s character and Arthur O’Connell’s who are inside the lab and monitoring the proceedings.

I do not have enough background in the science arena to know how authentic any of this is, but Isaac Asimov who was hired to write the novelization to the movie, stated that the script was full of ‘plot holes’. The one thing that did stand out to me was the part where the crew members are inside the patient’s inner ear and all the doctors inside the lab are forced to stand perfectly still and not make any noise as the sound vibrations could prove dangerous. However, it’s virtually impossible for there to be no noise at all. Even if someone tries to be perfectly quiet other noises that are less conspicuous would become more prominent like breathing, heartbeats, or other background sounds. In either event there would still be sound waves going through the patient’s ear long before one of the nurses accidently drops a medical utensil on the floor like they do here.

For popcorn entertainment it’s not too bad. In fact my favorite part was watching the process of how the crew gets miniaturized, which is actually pretty cool, but this is one of those films were you clearly can’t think about it too hard or it will ruin your enjoyment.

Frank Fane (Stephen Boyd) is a flippant, self-centered, and arrogant man who makes a living by setting up gigs for his stripper girlfriend Laurel (Jill St John) at local strip joints. By pure chance he watches the rehearsal of a play and in a fit of frustration jumps onto the stage to show the actors how to perform a knife fight when he doesn’t think they are doing it right. This impresses Sophie (Eleanor Parker) who uses her influence to get him signed to a contract at a big movie studio that makes Frank a star almost overnight, but as the years pass the quality and quantity of his roles diminish. His overspending begins to catch up with him and just when he thinks his career may have faded he gets nominated for the Oscar. He feels a win will revive his career and will stop at nothing and use every dirty trick he can in order to influence the vote.

Adapted from the Richard Sale novel this is high drama at its worst. The scenarios are over-the-top and soap opera-like while bearing little relation to reality. The characterizations are on a kindergarten level and a composite of every Hollywood cliché and stereotype rolled together. The dialogue sounds like it was taken from a 50’s B-movie and comes off more like rants and speeches than anything any real person would actually say. Any attempt at gaining any insight into the behind-the-scenes world of Hollywood is lost with a script that becomes wildly off-center until it becomes absurd and ludicrous. Famed science fiction writer Harlan Ellison who scripted this mess was completely out of his realm here and the film is so botched, over-long, and redundant that it isn’t even good for laughs.

If the film had a glossy visual quality to it then it could at least be entertaining on that level, but director Russell Rouse shows no visual flair, or imagination. The scenes are lighted too brightly, which washes out the color and makes the sets look flat and one-dimensional. The music is too loud and used in a heavy-handed way similar to the canned laughter on some sitcoms. Every time there is some dramatic revelation, or shift the music comes booming out in order to alert the viewer who apparently was perceived by the filmmakers to be too dumb to pick up on it otherwise.

I did like Boyd in the lead. He has good looking chiseled features and parlays the necessary arrogance of the part, but the character is wholly dislikable and only gets worse as the film progresses and having to spend two hours watching a jerk be nothing but a jerk is too much.

The only time he shows any slight compassion is when he finds a fellow actor (Peter Lawford) down on his luck, but it is too extreme to believe that a one-time headlining movie star could one day fall to the point that he would have to wait tables to make a living and thus makes this moment as ridiculous and everything else in the movie. An ‘A’ list actor may fall down to becoming a ‘B’ list actor, or having to go from movies to guest spots on TV-shows, or even doing commercials, or infomercials, but having to become a waiter at a restaurant just isn’t plausible.

Elke Sommar gives a sincere performance and her German accent is sexy, but her character becomes too much of an emotional yo-yo. One minute she loves Frank then the next minute she hates him, only to quickly fall in-love with him again and then hate him shortly after that. Parker, as Frank’s mistress on the side, is good, but wasted despite looking as elegant as ever.

Tony Bennett is badly miscast as Frank’s best friend Hymie. This was to date his one and only film role and he may be a great crooner, but as an actor he is uncharismatic. Milton Berle fares almost as poorly playing Frank’s agent. Initially it was interesting seeing him take a dramatic turn instead of being the perennial comic ham, but his acting skills appear limited and his drama becomes as hammy as his comedy.

Ernest Borgnine gives the film’s only real solid performance as a shady and conniving private detective. The scene where Frank slugs him and it sends him flying backwards and toppling over his desk before crashing against the back wall is the film’s only good moment unless you count St John’s opening striptease.

Lots of cameos by famous stars and celebrities including famed costume designer Edith Head in a non-speaking part and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper in a part she did just before her death.

A good movie can inspire the viewer and expand their thinking and imagination, but this film had the absolute opposite effect. It made me feel like my mind had been sucked away by a giant vacuum. I felt depressed after watching it and continued to feel depressed the next day when I woke up.